Back at the door of the cabin Th.o.r.eau stood with one of his big arms encircling Marie"s slim shoulders.
"I tell you it is like taking the life of a puppy, _ma cherie_," he was saying. "It is inconceivable. It is bloodthirsty. And yet...."
He opened the door behind them.
"They are gone," he finished. "_Ka Sakhet_--they are gone--and they will not come back!"
CHAPTER IX
In spite of the portentous significance of this day in his life David could not help seeing and feeling in his suddenly changed environment, as he puffed along behind Father Roland, something that was neither adventure nor romance, but humour. A whimsical humour at first, but growing grimmer as his thoughts sped. All his life he had lived in a great city, he had been a part of its life--a discordant note in it, and yet a part of it for all that. He had been a fixture in a certain lap of luxury. That luxury had refined him. It had manicured him down to a fine point of civilization. A fine point! He wanted to laugh, but he had need of all his breath as he _clip-clip-clipped_ on his snow shoes behind the Missioner. This was the last thing in the world he had dreamed of, all this snow, all this emptiness that loomed up ahead of him, a great world filled only with trees and winter. He disliked winter; he had always possessed a physical antipathy for snow; romance, for him, was environed in warm climes and sunny seas. He had made a mistake in telling Father Roland that he was going to British Columbia--a great mistake.
Undoubtedly he would have kept on. j.a.pan had been in his mind. And now here he was headed straight for the north pole--the Arctic Ocean. It was enough to make him want to laugh. Enough to make any sane person laugh.
Even now, only half a mile from Th.o.r.eau"s cabin, his knees were beginning to ache and his ankles were growing heavy. It was ridiculous.
Inconceivable, as the Frenchman had said to Marie. He was soft. He was only half a man. How long would he last? How long before he would have to cry quits, like a whipped boy? How long before his legs would crumple up under him, and his lungs give out? How long before Father Roland, hiding his contempt, would have to send him back?
A sense of shame--shame and anger--swept through him, heating his brain, setting his teeth hard, filling him again with a grim determination. For the second time that day his fighting blood rose. It surged through his veins in a flood, beating down the old barriers, clearing away the obstructions of his doubts and his fears, and filling him with the _desire_ to go on--the desire to fight it out, to punish himself as he deserved to be punished, and to win in the end. Father Roland, glancing back in benignant solicitude, saw the new glow in David"s eyes. He saw, also, his parted lips and the quickness of his breath. With a sharp command he stopped Mukoki and the dogs.
"Half a mile at a time is enough for a beginner," he said to David.
"Back off your shoes and ride the next half mile."
David shook his head.
"Go on," he said, tersely, saving his wind. "I"m just finding myself."
Father Roland loaded and lighted his pipe. The aroma of the tobacco filled David"s nostrils as they went on. Clouds of smoke wreathed the Little Missioner"s shoulders as he followed the trail ahead of him. It was comforting, that smoke. It warmed David with a fresh desire. His exertion was clearing out his lungs. He was inhaling balsam and spruce, a mighty tonic of dry forest air, and he felt also the craving to smoke.
But he knew that he could not afford the waste of breath. His snow shoes were growing heavier and heavier, and back of his knees the tendons seemed preparing to snap. He kept on, at last counting his steps. He was determined to make a mile. He was ready to groan when a sudden twist in the trail brought them out of the forest to the edge of a lake whose frozen surface stretched ahead of them for miles. Mukoki stopped the dogs. With a gasp David floundered to the sledge and sat down.
"Finding myself," he managed to say. "Just--finding myself!"
It was a triumph for him--the last half of that mile. He knew it. He felt it. Through the white haze of his breath he looked out over the lake. It was wonderfully clear, and the sun was shining. The surface of the lake was like an untracked carpet of white sprinkled thickly with tiny diamonds where the sunlight fell on its countless billions of snow crystals. Three or four miles away he could see the dark edge of the forest on the other side. Up and down the lake the distance was greater.
He had never seen anything like it. It was marvellous--like a dream picture. And he was not cold as he looked at it. He was warm, even uncomfortably warm. The air he breathed was like a new kind of fuel. It gave him the peculiar sensation of feeling _larger_ inside; he seemed to drink it in; it expanded his lungs; he could feel his heart pumping with an audible sound. There was nothing in the majesty and wonder of the scene about him to make him laugh, but he laughed. It was exultation, an involuntary outburst of the change that was working within him. He felt, suddenly, that a dark and purposeless world had slipped behind him. It was gone. It was as if he had come out of a dark and gloomy cavern, in which the air had been vitiated and in which he had been cramped for breath--a cavern which fluttered with the uneasy ghosts of things, poisonous things. Here was the sun. A sky blue as sapphire. A great expanse. A wonder-world. Into this he had escaped!
That was the thought in his mind as he looked at Father Roland. The Little Missioner was looking at him with an effulgent satisfaction in his face, a satisfaction that was half pride, as though he had achieved something that was to his own personal glory.
"You"ve beat me, David," he exulted. "The first time I had snow shoes on I didn"t make one half that distance before I was tangled up like a fish in a net!" He turned to Mukoki. "_Mey-oo iss e chikao!_" he cried.
"Remember?" and the Indian nodded, his leathery face breaking into a grin.
David felt a new pleasure at their approbation. He had evidently done well, exceedingly well. And he had been afraid of himself! Apprehension gave way to confidence. He was beginning to experience the exquisite thrill of fighting against odds.
He made no objection this time when Father Roland made a place for him on the sledge.
"We"ll have four miles of this lake," the Missioner explained to him, "and the dogs will make it in an hour. Mukoki and I will both break trail."
As they set off David found his first opportunity to see the real Northland in action--the clean, sinuous movement of the men ahead of him, the splendid eagerness with which the long, wolfish line of beasts stretched forth in their traces and followed in the snow-shoe trail.
There was something imposing about it all, something that struck deep within him and roused strange thoughts. This that he saw was not the mere labour of man and beast; it was not the humdrum toil of life, not the daily slaving of living creatures for existence--for food, and drink, and a sleeping place. It had risen above that. He had seen ships and castles rise up from heaps of steel and stone; achievements of science and the handiwork of genius had interested and sometimes amazed him, but never had he looked upon physical effort that thrilled him as did this that he was looking upon now. There was almost the spirit of the epic about it. They _were_ the survival of the fittest--these men and dogs. They had gone through the great test of life in the raw, as the pyramids and the sphinx had outlived the ordeals of the centuries; they were different; they were proven; they were of another kind of flesh and blood than he had known--and they fascinated him. They stood for more than romance and adventure, for more than tragedy or possible joy; they were making no fight for riches--no fight for power, or fame, or great personal achievement. Their struggle in this great, white world--terrible in its emptiness, its vastness, and its mercilessness for the weak--was simply a struggle that they might _live_.
The thought staggered him. Could there be joy in that--in a mere existence without the thousand pleasures and luxuries and excitements that he had known? He drank deeply of the keen air as he asked himself the question. His eyes rested on the s.h.a.ggy, undulating backs of the big huskies; he noted their half-open jaws, the sharp alertness of their pointed ears, the almost joyous unction with which they entered into their task, their eagerness to keep their load close upon the heels of their masters. He heard Mukoki"s short, sharp, and unnecessary commands, his _hi-yi"s_ and his _ki-yi"s_, as though he were crying out for no other reason than from sheer physical exuberance. He saw Father Roland"s face turned backward for a moment, and it was smiling. They were happy--now! Men and beasts were happy. And he could see no reason for their happiness except that their blood was pounding through their veins, even as it was pounding through his own. That was it--the blood.
The heart. The lungs. The brain. All were clear--clear and unfettered in that marvellous air and sunlight, washed clean by the swift pulse of life. It was a wonderful world! A glorious world! He was almost on the point of crying aloud his discovery.
The thrill grew in him as he found time now to look about. Under him the broad, steel runners of the sledge made a cold, creaking sound as they slipped over the snow that lay on the ice of the lake; he heard the swift _tap_, _tap_, _tap_ of the dogs" feet, their panting breath that was almost like laughter, low throat whines, and the steady swish of the snow shoes ahead. Beyond those sounds a vast silence encompa.s.sed him. He looked out into it, east and west to the dark rims of forest, north and south over the distance of that diamond-sprinkled _tundra_ of unbroken white. He drew out his pipe, loaded it with tobacco, and began to smoke.
The bitterness of the weed was gone. It was delicious. He puffed luxuriously. And then, suddenly, as he looked at the purplish bulwarks of the forest, his mind swept back. For the first time since that night many months ago he thought of the Woman--the Golden G.o.ddess--without a red-hot fire in his brain. He thought of her coolly. This new world was already giving back to him a power of a.n.a.lysis, a perspective, a healthier conception of truths and measurements. What a horrible blot they had made in his life--that man and that woman! What a foul trick they had played him! What filth they had wallowed in! And he--he had thought her the most beautiful creature in the world, an angel, a thing to be worshipped. He laughed, almost without sound, his teeth biting hard on the stem of his pipe. And the world he was looking upon laughed; the snow diamonds, lying thickly as dust, laughed; there was laughter in the sun, the warmth of chuckling humour in those glowing walls of forest, laughter in the blue sky above.
His hands gripped hard.
In this world he knew there could not be another woman such as she.
Here, in all this emptiness and glory, her shallow soul would have shrieked in agony; she would have shrivelled up and died. It was too clean. Too white. Too pure. It would have frightened her, tortured her.
She could not have found the poison she required to give her life. Her unclean desires would have driven her mad. So he arraigned her, terribly, without malice, and without pity. And then, like the quieting touch of a gentle hand in his brain, came the thought of the other woman--the Girl--whose picture he carried in his pocket. This was _her_ world that he was entering. She was up there--somewhere--and he looked over the barriers of the forest to the northwest. Hundreds of miles away. A thousand. It was a big world, so vast that he still could not comprehend it. But she was there, living, breathing, _alive_! A sudden impulse made him draw the picture from his pocket. He held it down behind a bale, so that Father Roland would not chance to see it if he looked back. He unwrapped the picture, and ceased to puff at his pipe.
The Girl was wonderful to-day, under the sunlight and the blue halo of the skies, and she wanted to speak to him. That thought always came to him first of all when he looked at her. She wanted to speak. Her lips were trembling, her eyes were looking straight into his, the sun above him seemed to gleam in her hair. It was as if she knew of the thoughts that were in his mind, and of the fight he was making; as though through s.p.a.ce she had seen him, and watched him, and wanted to cry out for him the way to come. There was a curious tremble in his fingers as he restored the picture to his pocket. He whispered something. His pipe had gone out. In the same moment a sharp cry from Father Roland startled him. The dogs halted suddenly. The creaking of the sledge runners ceased.
Father Roland had turned his face down the lake, and was pointing.
"Look!" he cried.
David jumped from the sledge and stared back over their trail. The scintillating gleams of the snow crystals were beginning to p.r.i.c.k his eyes, and for a few moments he could see nothing new. He heard a m.u.f.fled e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n of surprise from Mukoki. And then, far back--probably half a mile--he saw a dark object travelling slowly toward them. It stopped. It was motionless as a dark rock now. Close beside him the Little Missioner said:
"You"ve won again, David. Baree is following us!"
The dog came no nearer as they watched. After a moment David pursed his lips and sent back a curious, piercing whistle. In days to come Baree was to recognize that call, but he gave no attention to it now. For several minutes they stood gazing back at him. When they were ready to go on David for a third time that day put on his snow shoes. His task seemed less difficult. He was getting the "swing" of the shoes, and his breath came more easily. At the end of half an hour Father Roland halted the team again to give him a "winding" spell. Baree had come nearer. He was not more than a quarter of a mile behind. It was three o"clock when they struck off the lake into the edge of the forest to the northwest.
The sun had grown cold and pale. The snow crystals no longer sparkled so furiously. In the forest there was gathering a gray, silent gloom. They halted again in the edge of that gloom. The Missioner slipped off his mittens and filled his pipe with fresh tobacco. The pipe fell from his fingers and buried itself in the soft snow at his feet. As he bent down for it Father Roland said quite audibly:
"_d.a.m.n!_"
He was smiling when he rose. David, also, was smiling.
"I was thinking," he said--as though the other had demanded an explanation of his thoughts--"what a curious man of G.o.d you are, _mon Pere_!"
The Little Missioner chuckled, and then he muttered, half to himself as he lighted the tobacco, "True--very true." When the top of the bowl was glowing, he added: "How are your legs? It is still a good mile to the shack."
"I am going to make it or drop," declared David.
He wanted to ask a question. It had been in his mind for some time, and he burned with a strange eagerness to have it answered. He looked back, and saw Baree circling slowly over the surface of the lake toward the forest. Casually he inquired:
"How far is it to Tavish"s, _mon Pere_?"
"Four days," said the Missioner. "Four days, if we make good time, and another week from there to G.o.d"s Lake. I have paid Tavish a visit in five days, and once Tavish made G.o.d"s Lake in two days and a night with seven dogs. Two days and a night! Through darkness he came--darkness and a storm. That is what fear will do, David. Fear drove him. I have promised to tell you about it to-night. You must know, to understand him. He is a strange man--a very strange man!"
He spoke to Mukoki in Cree, and the Indian responded with a sharp command to the dogs. The huskies sprang from their bellies and strained forward in their traces. The Cree picked his way slowly ahead of them.
Father Roland dropped in behind him. Again David followed the sledge. He was struck with wonder at the suddenness with which the sun had gone out. In the thick forest it was like the beginning of night. The deep shadows and darkly growing caverns of gloom seemed to give birth to new sounds. He heard the _whit_, _whit_, _whit_, of something close to him, and the next moment a great snow owl flitted like a ghostly apparition over his head; he heard the patter of snow as it fell from the bending limbs; from out of a patch of darkness two trees, rubbing slightly against each other, emitted a shivering wail that startled him--it had seemed so like the cry of a child. He was straining his ears so tensely to hear, and his eyes to see, that he forgot the soreness of his knees and ankles. Now and then the dogs stopped while Mukoki and the Missioner dragged a log or a bit of brushwood from their path. During one of these intervals there came to them, from a great distance, a long, mournful howl.
"A wolf!" said Father Roland, his face a gray shadow as he nodded at David. "Listen!"
From behind them came another cry. It was Baree.
They went on, circling around the edge of a great windfall. A low wind was beginning to move in the tops of the spruce and cedar, and soft splashes of snow fell on their heads and shoulders, as if unseen and playful hands were pelting them from above. Again and again David caught the swift, ghostly flutter of the snow owls; three times he heard the wolf-howl; once again Baree"s dismal, homeless cry; and then they came suddenly out of the thick gloom of the forest into the twilight gray of a clearing. Twenty paces from them was a cabin. The dogs stopped. Father Roland fumbled at his big silver watch, and held it close up to his eyes.
"Half-past four," he said. "Fairly good time for a beginner, David!"